


Unbreakable Bond

by jujubiest



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Dana Scully would never do that, Ficlet, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, One Shot, Post-Finale, Spoilers, fuck Chris Carter honestly, rape mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 23:34:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14068011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: Dana Scully reflects on William now that she knows the truth.





	Unbreakable Bond

**Author's Note:**

> A post-finale fix-it fic, because who the fuck doesn’t need it after that shitshow?
> 
> Major spoilers for what is hopefully the last episode of The X-Files ever.

That night, she does not go home with Mulder.

That night, she does not go home at all.

It’s too quiet.

She can’t take it: that big, empty, sterile house. She hates it. She’s going to sell it; she’s already decided. Under market if she has to, so long as it’s gone, and fast.

She recalls an apartment she hasn’t lived in for years. Smaller. Outdated appliances. White walls. Cream carpet. Generic, the way apartments are. But there was a crib in the second bedroom, and there were bottles in the fridge. She sang a tiny baby boy to sleep and told herself she would always keep him safe.

She checks into a hotel room under someone else’s name. She doesn’t want to be Dana Scully tonight.

She doesn’t want to be the woman who bore an experimental child, a child created through high-tech reproductive rape. A child she was never meant to raise. A child she loved.

A child she failed.

A child she never even got to see.

Her head hasn’t been this quiet in days. It’s distracting, a constant feeling that she has misplaced something vitally important.

She sits on the bed. Every inch of her feels too heavy, and slow. Mulder looked so concerned when they parted ways. She could barely look him in the eye once they got off the docks. If she did, if she looked too long, she would break. The facade would crack and he would see the truth.

If she looked too long, she would start picking things out. Eyes. Hair. Jawline. Nose. Difficulty trusting. Stubbornnes beyond all reason.

All those little things about William that had screamed  _Mulder_.  _Mulder’s son_.

But he wasn’t Mulder’s son. He was…

“Oh god,” she says aloud to no one, a wave of nausea hitting her like a baseball bat to the gut.

He was Mulder’s brother.

She presses a hand to her mouth and runs. She barely makes it to the bathroom in time.

Mulder’s brother. Her son. Yes,  _her son_. An experiment? Maybe. But her son still.

She may have tried to rationalize it away, to lessen the blow of losing him again by telling herself, telling Mulder, that William was never their son at all.

But she knew when she said it, that wall just wasn’t going to last. It was a fragile thing, built out of denial and an indifference she desperately wished she could really feel. No match for seventeen years of thwarted, painful, guilt-ridden love.

It’s already crumbling, and there is a pitch-black tidal wave of despair behind it, just waiting to swallow her whole.

She squeezes her eyes shut and presses her forehead to the cool glass of the bathroom mirror.

“He was…an experiment,” she moans. “He was…never…he was….”

It isn’t working. Well. It was never going to work for long.

She makes it back to the bed and curls in on herself, cradling her grief like it’s the child she has lost so many times now, in so many different ways, all of them unspeakably cruel.

It takes her a long time to fall asleep. When she does, she dreams of water. Water all around her. Water beneath a pair of sneakered feet, swinging idly over the edge of a dock. Water going from inky black to deep blue to fiery, the sun rising and staining it with color.

She dreams of a brown-haired boy with sad, intelligent eyes. He looks out over the tranquil water. His thoughts are filled with hope, and regret. His father killed the man who made him. His father freed him.

And his mother let him go.

And he couldn’t have asked for a greater gift.

 _I wish I could know you better_.

When she wakes, in her mind is a comfortable silence. Two people who can speak whenever they want, but who choose not to. Because there is nothing that needs saying. Nothing they don’t already know. Or feel.

She smiles.


End file.
